


you're the opportunity i never took

by kuro49



Category: DCU, Nightwing (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Dick Grayson is Ric Grayson, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 15:45:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17449784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: In the salt of Jason's skin on the flat of his tongue, Dick finds a new start.Or, the one where an exiled Red Hood meets Ric Grayson.





	you're the opportunity i never took

**Author's Note:**

> jason and ric look more like brothers now than ever and i just laugh at dc because what the fuck is this, i don't want any of this but i'm here to make smut out of it regardless.

 

"No helmet?"

Ric calls out, recalling Red Hood as someone looking a little bit more symbolic than the figure standing at the edge of the three storey apartment just on the corner of the cross street where Ric's crashing for the week. He watches as the man drops down to street level with ease, heavy footsteps falling as he makes his way to him.

A man with a buzz cut and a muzzle covering half his face, the red of his hood flipped down in some half-assed attempt at fulfilling his name's sake. Unlike all the other bats of Gotham, Ric doesn't have a single worry Jason is here to bring him home. Ric knows a man with his identity forcibly taken from him, he's been staring at one in the mirror for weeks now.

It's comforting to know he isn't alone.

"No black and blue spandex, pretty bird?" Jason returns the blow, and it is easy even when Dick isn't quite _Dick_. Dick or Ric or whatever he is happy with calling himself these days scoffs at that, points to the scar along the side of his head like that answers the question at all.

"I quit." He tells him, and Jason doesn't have to be there to know it was probably a little bit more dramatic than that. Even amnesia could do very little in the face of Richard John Grayson's special brand of stubbornness.

"A helmet would've done you some good."

This gets a laugh. A full-bellied, morbid kind of one that Jason doesn't flinch at. This far outside of the Bat's reach, Jason isn't wincing at the shadows when they stretch out this long. 

"And how about you?" Ric asks, tipping his head to the side while his eyes drag down the length of Jason's body. The intention is clear, spelled out in ways Dick would've never allowed himself. But Ric isn't him. "You look worse for wear."

"I'm still black and blue all over, birdbrain."

Jason can feel the full weight and the heat of Ric's gaze from beneath even the Kevlar. The neutrality of the location here is significant. It isn't Gotham. It has no bearings on who he is or who he was, and that works just fine for them both when Jason has no intention of being found and Dick has every intention of remaining lost in a man named Ric.

Perhaps, it isn't all coincidence that they find each other at all.

 

"If I call you Dick—"

Ric cuts Jason off before he can finish.

"No hard feelings and no offense taken." Ric doesn't entirely care for it but he can read people better than he wished he could. And right here, Jason is an open book. The moment he works the domino mask off, Ric figures Jason is looking to come clean. "I get a warm body in my bed, and you get whoever I used to be. I can't be mad about that."

Ric doesn't claim to know Jason's entire story but the water was murky before he ever waded into the pool.

Sprawled out across Ric's motel bed, Jason looks up at him from where the sheets are scratchy and don't smell of Dick. He doesn't know if it is relief or something else entirely that makes him go pliant when Ric's got a hand curling around his hip, fingers hot against the bare strip of skin, blunt edge of his nails scraping as he traces what he sees.

"Works for me."

Jason pushes himself up on an elbow while Ric bends down, opens his mouth for the way Ric licks into it, touching his tongue to his like he is something to be sampled. It's not soul shattering or life affirming and it doesn't need to be. Jason pulls Ric down on top of him and pushes that grey hoodie with the zipper pulled down close to his navel off of one shoulder until the man gets the hint to take it all off.

Ric kisses him thoroughly this time without any further prompting, and Jason doesn't let it get to him when the only thought that runs through his head goes something along these lines: Dick has always been a quick learner.

His hands roam, tracing scars, he knows Dick but not like this. And then Ric whistles sharply at the extent of the bruising when Jason pulls his shirt off, shows off the entirety of his torso to him and then some with how far Ric's worked his pants off of the jut of his hips.

"You weren't fucking kidding."

Jason straight up _laughs_ even as Ric drags the edge of his teeth against one particularly nasty bruise.

 

“You look like—”

“ _Oh_ , I think I have an idea.” Jason lets out, he's got the rough sheets tangled in between his fingers and Ric between his thighs, and he can feel every single inch pressed deep inside of him. Their skin is slippery with slick and sweat, hot with heat from the friction and the mounting pressure. Ric smiles and it only widens when Jason screws his eyes shut, mouth falling open at how close he is.

The idea comes from the way Ric pushes him, not with expectations but in earnest, and Jason gives into that.

Pinned to the mattress of a cheap little motel room in a town with a name he can't recall, Jason's head goes clear.

"I think I like you better as Ric."

It is not a fair statement, not when Ric has only ever known himself as that. But Jason isn't looking to play a fair game, not when he's got his face half-buried in the pillows, his words coming out muffled and on a breathy whine when Ric fucks into him hard enough to have the headboard thud dully against the wall.

"Well, Jason." Ric pants out, mouth barely curling into the most vicious little grin that gives him dimples. "I like you too."

And there is some finality to that with the way the conviction settles like contusions on the skin.

His eyes are the same blue, and Jason closes his eyes to that. He isn't mad that this isn't Dick. It is far from that.

There is enough trauma here that can still smell the stench of death but Jason is tired of being beaten into submission and Ric can't keep feeling guilty over memories he does not have. He can wish on every single one of Dick Grayson's lucky stars, and there seems to be a great deal of them, to return the feelings of a family in Gotham that he doesn't have. A home in name with roots that aren't his.

On this body beneath his where he can trace Jason's scars like veins, Ric leaves a bruise of his own.

A fresh start in the salt of his skin on the flat of his tongue. Sometimes, it's nice to just feel good.

Jason's got his face half-hidden in the pillows, shouting into it. He doesn't call him Ric when he comes, but he also doesn't say Dick.

 


End file.
